With rapid development of communications technologies, a quantity of UE (user equipment) such as a mobile phone and a tablet computer is increasing sharply, and what is accompanied is a high demand for bandwidth resources. In the prior art, a white space device such as a Node B (base station) uses a white space to increase bandwidth resources, so as to meet the high demand for bandwidth resources, where the white space may be used in multiple application scenarios, such as a cellular network, a wireless local area network, and broadband access. The white space device generally uses the white space in a manner of querying a database in a spectrum database device.
A spectrum management organization allocates a large quantity of spectrum resources to the wireless application field such as television signal transmission, where the allocated spectrum resources may not be used within a regional range in a time period (some spectra that are not effectively used are white spaces). In this case, a waste of the spectrum resources is caused.
When needing to use a white space resource, the white space device needs to initiate a spectrum usage request to the spectrum database device. The white space device sends geographic location information and the like of the white space device to the spectrum database device; and the spectrum database device allocates an available white space A to the white space device according to the information transmitted by the white space device and spectrum resource information stored and managed by the spectrum database device.
For example, the white space A used by the white space device may be allowed to be used only in a time period, and not be allowed to be used in a next time period; certainly, the same white space A may also be used in several consecutive time periods. However, a mechanism of updating and using the white space by the white space device in the prior art is that, each time when the white space needs to be updated and used, a complete spectrum usage request needs to be performed once again, and one of available white spaces that are received and allocated by the spectrum database device is selected to be configured and used. In addition, the available white spaces allocated by the spectrum database device may only be a part of available white spaces, and not all available white spaces are listed; for example, a case in which the white space A that is currently used by the white space device is omitted exists, which causes that the spectrum database device needs to switch to configuring and using another white space B to work.
It is not hard to see that when the white space device is providing a service such as wireless access for UE by using the white space A, if the white space A is available, but the white space device is forced to switch to configuring and using the white space B to work, updating and using the white space by the white space device may cause a phenomenon such as low service signal quality of the UE or signal interruption, which affects quality of service.